I could not sleep for thinking of the sky
A comment from another blogger about an item of mine containing another bit of poetry led me to put up this astronomy-inspired poem, by the former Poet Laureate John Masefield. It’s from a cycle called Lollingdown Downs, and is actually the 12th poem in the sequence. I hope you like it.
I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.
If I could sail that nothing, I should cross
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing,
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing,
And rage into a sun with wandering planets
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed,
See his last light upon his last moon’s granites
Die to a dark that would be night indeed.
Night where my soul might sail a million years
In nothing, not even death, not even tears.
In the Dark 
October 21, 2009 at 10:18 am
Our last great Poet Laureate.
October 21, 2009 at 10:44 am
I think his poetry is very hit–and-miss, but his best work is brilliant. To say it is “uneven” is a compliment compared to those whose work is even, in the sense of being consistently tedious.
October 21, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Yes quite. Even a one-hit wonder has made one good record more than most artistes.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Faber book of Parodies, but it contains a good one of “Sea Fever” as well as predictable but still very funny AE Housman parodies.
Anton
October 22, 2009 at 11:26 am
I think a more realistic game would be an astronomical sonnet competition, along the lines of the Haiku and Clerihew ones. Would be a bit tougher though, even if I accepted Miltonic or Petrarchian forms as well as Shakespearian.
Incidentally, I’ve seen that particular poem in different forms, either broken into stanzas as I did it or as one single verse as most sonnets are. I don’t have the original published version so don’t know which is right.
October 22, 2009 at 12:36 pm
In any case the structure is clearer if you separate the components. I think that’s probably the best way for beginners to write a Sonnet.
October 22, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Phillip’s link would not display for me (Google blocked it for copyright reasons). An open access collection of John Masefield’s poems can be found at http://www.archive.org/stream/collectedpoems00maseuoft, with the poem in question on page 407.
October 23, 2009 at 2:37 pm
[…] is a meditation on it. It seems to me to be a natural companion to the poem by John Masefield I posted earlier in the week, but I don’t know whether they share a common inspiration in the Psalm or just in the […]
October 23, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Philip: I’m impressed. I hope that doesn’t sound patronising, because I don’t mean it to be – Anton
October 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[…] on from Philip Helbig’s challenge a couple of posts ago, I decided to commemorate the occasion comments with an appropriate sonnet, inspired by […]
November 3, 2009 at 3:27 am
Ok whilst not strictly adhering to the above, I quite like this:
The integral sec y dy
From zero to one-sixth of pi
Is the log to base e
Of the square root of three
Times the sixty-fourth power of i
December 16, 2009 at 10:58 am
[…] sure are going to sacrificed in large numbers to balance the books. It reminded me a bit about a poem I posted a while ago: I could not sleep for thinking of the … […]
October 25, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I think it’s number 5 in the sequence… page 12 though. And I agree, John Masefield is really a great poet. 🙂
July 7, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for posting this: it’s one of my favourite sonnets. You’re missing a word in the twelfth line, though: it’s not “Die to dark” but “Die to a dark” (otherwise it would be a syllable short). Note the emphasis caused by this line’s reversed initial foot (“DIE to a DARK”…)